The Crypt
by Trash Reads
Summary: This started out just as an exploration of what Klaus may have been thinking and feeling in the crypt when he was a kid, but ended up being an exploration of his thoughts throughout all of episode four. T for light swearing and bloody ghosts.


"_Klaus. Klaus. Klaus. Klaus!"_

_The whispers wouldn't stop. Klaus huddled in a corner with his eyes shut tight, knowing what would greet him if he were to open his eyes. Very little light permeated the stone crypt, but even so, he could see them all around, filling the space around him. It seemed as if there were too many to fit in the small space, and yet here they were._

"_Klaus!"_

_He jumped. They were so close. He could sense them there. Smell them, hear them, could almost feel them brushing up against him. Almost as if they were living, breathing, people. But he knew better. He could smell the blood and death, hear the rattle in the lungs of those who died of lung cancer or turburculosis. And he could sense them in another way, too. The way he suspected animals could sense them when they would stare in the direction of the dead he knew that only he could see. He had always felt a kinship with animals this way. They just knew that what they sensed there didn't belong in the natural world. The cats knew it, dogs knew it, Klaus knew it. Despite this, animals never seemed to take to him. Maybe they sensed that he, too, didn't fully belong in this living world._

"_Dad!" He screamed. His throat felt raw._

_And now he could feel them closing in. It seemed as if they were getting ever closer, that any second, they would be upon him, grabbing him, pulling him into their world and away from the land of the living, but the moment never came. Klaus sobbed, having long since given up on screaming for help. Distantly he recognized that he had pissed himself at some point but was unable to even muster up a sense of shame, so overcome with fear as he was. He screamed for his dad, not knowing who else to call for. Nobody would come for him, nobody knew he was there except his father. Nobody cared. His siblings would all be going about their studies as usual today. It was Saturday. He missed their allotted half hour of freedom reserved for fun and games, but right now he couldn't bring himself to care. He would go about his studies and never participate in free time ever again if only his father would let him out of the crypt._

"_Go away! Dad! Let me out!" He cried. His nails were broken, fingertips bloody from clawing at the walls, the grounds, his own skin. Anything to try and get away from the monsters trying to get him._

_He screamed as loud as he could. Screamed until he was out of air, until his throat felt bloodied. It did him no good. No one came for him._

_Eventually, at some point in the five hours his father said he was to spend in the crypt, he passed out on the floor in his corner. He didn't remember passing out, had no idea how long he had spent laying on the floor, blissfully numb to the dead around him._

"Klaus." This voice was different. Dead, like the rest. But familiar, comforting. "Klaus!" The voice persisted. Klaus slowly came to and realized he was screaming, muffled by the duct tape over his mouth. Screaming, and tied up in a closet. But not in a crypt. Not surrounded by the dead. Just Ben. Thank the gods for Ben. "Breathe." Ben told him as Klaus tried in vain to stop screaming. "You're in the worst of it now. Just try and stay calm."

They both turned to peek out the slats of the closet doors confusedly when they heard a vacuum switched on. A maid was beginning to clean up the room. Klaus started screaming again in earnest, but it did him no good, and finally Ben tried to get him to stop again. "She can't hear you." He said.

Then of course, Ben felt it necessary to add in one of his little guilt trips. Klaus felt he was much too sober to be dealing with that right about then, but tied up as he was, he didn't have much of a choice. It hurt to hear, hurt to be told again how he was pissing away his life. A life that his brother never got a chance to live. And finally, he quieted to muffled sobs.

Eventually his torturers came back for him, glad to see him still in the closet despite the thorough cleaning their room had received. They pulled him out of the closet, and Klaus looked up at their mask-less faces. He made out like he was trying to tell them something, hoping they would pull the duct tape off again. It was so itchy. They obliged, pulling it off and asking him what he was trying to say.

"You guys are scarier without the masks." He told them tiredly.

He got a smack across the cheek for his trouble, but it was worth it. Both for the annoyance on their faces, and the amusement on Ben's.

"That's no way to say 'hello' to your old friends, is it?" The guy asked him.

"Can't we call it a night?" Klaus asked. "I already gave you what you wanted. Just, please… Please let me go. Please" He groaned. He hated to be reduced to begging, but really, what dignity did he have left?

"Well technically we want your brother," the girl told him. "Is your brother here now?"

"Uh, he…" Klaus looked over to where Ben was lounging on the bed. "You're gonna have to be a little more specific than that." Ben winked at him as he laughed.

"Ow!" His joke earned him another slap across the face. "I told you already, he's not coming. No one will." It was a shitty reminder every time he said it. Nobody even knew he was gone, because nobody cared. He didn't deserve their attention, and they were happy to not provide it.

"Well, Number Five knows now. We left him a message. And when he comes for you, we'll be ready."

Klaus sighed, and they turned his chair around to face the door, then turned out the lights and walked to the back of the room. Klaus sobbed as they turned the lights out, already knowing he wouldn't be able to guard against the onslaught of memories in the dark.

_He awoke to the door of the crypt creaking open, spreading sweet, beautiful moonlight across the stone walls and broken boy._

"_Welcome back to the land of the living, Number Four." His father said, staring down at him from the top of the steps._

"_Can I go now?" Klaus asked shakily. The words felt like they were knives, forcing their way out of his throat._

"_Have you overcome your fear of the dead?" His father asked him, unshakable in the midst of the little boy's pain._

_Klaus nodded, not trusting himself to give voice to the lie._

_His father nodded too, "You must become master of your own life, Number Four." He said, "Or it will become the master of you."_

"_Please," Klaus cried, "I want to go home."_

_He knew as soon as he said it that it was a mistake._

"_Three more hours." His father said forcefully, and abruptly turned to leave. He turned and looked upon Klaus as he slammed the crypt doors shut and locked him inside once more._

"_No!" Klaus called as his father left, "Don't leave me." But it was no use. The dead descended upon him as soon as the doors blocked the light._

This time when he came to, Ben was sitting on the floor near him, leaning against a dresser. "You went there again, didn't you?" He asked calmly.

"No no no no no…" Klaus was still chanting, a part of him still struggling to come out from the memory of the crypt. The Babushka was muttering in Russian, pattering around the motel room. Klaus couldn't help but want her to shut up. Stupid old dead lady.

Then she started sobbing, crying out in Russian and yelling at the two gunmen. Klaus made the mistake of looking at her, the bloody, gruesome wound on her head telling the story of her death.

"Oh, Jesus!" Klaus looked away.

"Look at her." Ben told him. "At how she's looking at them."

Klaus would have rathered not, thank you.

"She's one of their victims!" Ben insisted.

Klaus slowly turned to look at her. She was crying softly and whimpering in Russian, looking between his two kidnappers.

"We can use this." Ben said. "Go on! You haven't been this sober since you were a teenager, since you decided to keep the ghosts at bay." Klaus looked away again, and Ben leaned closer. "This is your chance, Klaus. To control them, learn their secrets. Try to talk to her."

Klaus worked up his courage to turn around and whisper to the old ghost. "Hi… Hi, uh… What's your name?" He asked her softly, trying to push down the ever rising terror he felt when looking at her.

"Zoya Popova" She told him.

_Weird ass name. _He thought. But what he said was "Oh! That's a lovely name."

He asked her what happened, but the woman interrupted him. "What's gonna happen is I'm gonna cut your tongue out with a grapefruit spoon if you don't shut up!"

He ignored the threat, and simply said "Zoya Popova." He could see the shock that went across their faces and couldn't help but be proud that he was able to turn this around on them, at least a little. And when he told them laughingly that she was pissed at them, and his brother's face lit up in the biggest smile Klaus had seen in a while, that made it doubly worth it. Maybe he didn't always have to be such a screw up.

It felt less worth it when he was suddenly surrounded by the dead again. They just kept coming. Each with another complaint against his kidnappers. Klaus was disturbed by the dead, as always. But each dead person also came with another way Klaus could now see his life ending shortly, and none of them looked fun. Hands cut off and left to bleed to death? Slashed throat? Electric shock to the nipples? Wait… That last one didn't sound that bad, if he were to be honest.

But he listened to all their complaints, and eventually the kidnappers, Cha Cha and Hazel, he had learned, turned his chair back around to face them.

"Which one are you, Cha Cha or Hazel?" He questioned the man. He finally found the right story to plant a little seed of animosity, or even distrust, between his captors, and he gloated internally in victory when Cha Cha demanded to see Hazel in the bathroom.

"Nicely done." Ben told him.

"Thank you." Klaus said quietly, and he heard two of the dead behind him high-five each other in victory.

He let the two of them argue in the bathroom for some time before he couldn't help gloating a bit more. "Jan says you're a real mensch, Hazel." He said.

Cha Cha came striding out of the bathroom, a look of pure anger on her face. He kept going. "He says you were such a great-" He cut off when he saw Cha Cha unraveling the duct tape again. "No, no, no." but it was no use, and next thing he knew he couldn't speak again.

He bounced around in his chair a little, turning himself around. But there wasn't any point. He was stuck securely where he was. But it wasn't long after that that he saw a figure walking past the door outside. He tried screaming for them, but the duct tape muffled his voice too much, and they kept going. In his desperation, he did the only other thing he could think to do. He started banging his head on the table. Hard. It hurt, but he'd be damned if he was gonna let something like a little headache stop him.

He hit his head he was sure a hundred times, but finally the door creaked open. A cop. He felt relief flood through him as she cut his restraints. Everything after that happened so fast. She threw him to the ground behind the bed. Hazel came out of the bathroom, but Klaus knew it was far from over. But she was a cop and he was a naked junkie. She could handle herself. He was getting out of there.

He heard the single shot resound through the vents, but he didn't stop, didn't try to look back. He was gone. Gone with the briefcase, already hoping it would lead to his next score. But when he opened it on that bus, still covered in blood and hurting all over but elated from his escape, it led him somewhere much different from where he hoped. Led him to somewhere, someplace, sometime, some_one_, that he could never have imagined.


End file.
